Project Overview:

The NYC band, Shorelines to Sutton, desired a cover art design for their upcoming EP, The Desperate Few. I had worked with them creating a logo design and some brand identity elements already. The band already had a theme in mind. The idea was to create an image of two people (but maybe the same person) sitting under opposite sides of a tree. One is dressed in a suit and the other is dressed more casually. They are sitting under one tree with some landscape, separated by water with a city skyline in the background. However, each side is different, emulating the state of each person. The guy on the left in a suit is against a brighter city skyline, but on the other side of the tree, the person seems to be struggling and the skyline is the same city but a different vibe…darker and haunting.

I started by gathering some images and creating a sketch of the layout in Photoshop and Sketch. Then I rendered started the actual composite by rendering the tree in photoshop. I painted in some background grass and worked in a stream, which ended up becoming a path later on in the collaborative process. The skyline was a silhouette, with some texture added to give it more dimension. And I added flowers to the bright-side scene to give it a little extra “umph.” For my final steps, I stylized the paint texture and then added color correction and effects in Lightroom.